Decades before “Ann Landers” and “Dear Abby,” and for more than five decades from the 1930s through the 1980s, millions of women readers in the working-class city of Milwaukee and across the Midwestern region wrote the stories of their lives in letters to an advice column called “Dear Mrs. Griggs.” Their stories comprise a literal mother lode of evi- dence left by generations of women readers, whose opinions on gendered issues, in their own words, enliven this story. Although primarily a historical narrative enlivened by excerpts from women’s letters, the study is structured by results of a content analysis sampling from more than fifteen thousand columns--and countless letters, many per column--to track changing concerns of letter-writers across more than half a century in the mid-twentieth century, a time of significant transition in the history of women. The results of the content analysis on their issues, and their own words in excerpts from their letters, are discussed in the context of many other studies on the histories of women, media, and the Midwest. ‘Dear Mrs. Griggs’: Women Readers Pour Out Their Hearts in the Heartland includes eight chapters, beginning with a biography of the early years of Ione Quinby Griggs, a legendary icon of advice columnists and of newspaperdom in “America’s Heartland.” After her colorful career as a journalist in “Jazz Age” Chicago, covering “murderesses” and mob molls in the 1920s as well as women newly in politics and workplaces–or out of work in the 1930s, as she was, when her newspaper folded--she endured her own heartbreak and hard times that took her to Milwaukee to conduct a column that would endure for more than half a century, an "advice industry" record, which provides the continuity of the columnist as an internal control in the analysis. The next six chapters track changes and continuities, too, in women’s issues in their letters for more than five significant decades in their Midwestern working-class milieu, from the Depression through wars, peace, and the modern women’s movement. The columnist and her readers collaborated to create a form of community forum, a forerunner of modern "social media," with their interactive and more "sociable media" that made their page of the newspaper the most-read page in the newspaper. Writing their own page of the newspaper, they provided evidence to argue that women were not the “passive media consumers” posited in past studies. Their public debate on their issues in media for decades left a legacy in their letters that provide insight into their lives. The final chapter, which offers conclusions on findings from qualitative and quantitative analysis, and adds to our understanding today of women’s lives--and loves--in a Midwestern working-class city in momentous decades of the mid-twentieth century. The closing chapter also concludes the saga of their beloved columnist, who lived to be one hundred years old. In her final years, she often was interviewed on all that she had learned from her readers. To the end, however, she would not reveal all that she had learned in the letters that never saw print, sent to the woman said to have held more secrets of the city than anyone, when millions in Milwaukee and the Midwest turned daily for wisdom--and for the stories, sometimes hilarious and often heartfelt--penned by other readers, who also were the writers in a remarkable collaboration, an advice column called "Dear Mrs. Griggs."Table
of ContentsPreface Chapter One From the ‘Gilded Age’ to the ‘Jazz Age’ and the Front Page, 1891-1933 Chapter Two ‘Dear Mrs. Griggs’ and
the Great Depression, 1934-1940 Chapter Three Women Readers, the War, and the Recovery,
1941-1948 Chapter Four Postwar
Prosperity and the ‘Problem That Has No Name,’ 1949-1960 Chapter Five The Sixties Engender Debate on Sex and
Gender, 1961-1970 Chapter Six The Modern Women’s
Movement and Writing on Their Rights, 1971-1980 Chapter
Seven The End of the ERA and the End of an Era in Milwaukee, 1981-1985Chapter Eight Conclusions and Epilogue,
1985-1991 Bibliography Index

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.